Intragovernmental Holdings Continue To Soar

"Federal law requires that all excess funds be invested in interest-bearing securities backed by the full faith and credit of the United States."

Any "excess" funds that are held in the Social Security Trust Fund, Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and others are automatically lent to the government to fund their ongoing operations. In essence, these funds have interest-bearing "IOUs" (in the case of the Social Security Trust Fund, an IOU of over $2.5 trillion) from the United States government.

These IOUs are called "Intragovernmental holdings", and as of April 25th, these intragovernmental holdings totalled roughly $5 trillion ($4,990,014,819,965.70 to be exact). Combine these intragovernmental holdings with the $12.446 trillion that is owed to everyone else (American investors, foreign investors, hedge funds, pension funds, etc) and you have a total national debt load of $17.43 trillion.

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As of March 31st, 2014, the federal government owed at least $100 billion to these entities: